Telecommunications service providers have traditionally operated to provide distinct services. Local telecommunications service providers receive calls from local customers and route the calls to the appropriate destinations. For example, a call being placed from a customer of a first local telecommunications service provider to another region supported by a second local telecommunications service provider is routed to a long-haul telecommunications carrier for communication between the two local telecommunications service providers. Similarly, calls to toll free telephone numbers (e.g., 800 numbers) ate routed to a toll free service provider or interexchange carrier for routing to the appropriate telecommunications service providers that service the toll free telephone numbers.
Telecommunications service providers generally provide toll free numbers to its customers or prospective customers to contact sales or service customer representatives. Most larger telecommunications service providers have literally thousands of toll free telephone numbers. For example, one carrier is known to have over 3,000 official toll free numbers. On average, the cost for each call to the toll free number charged to the telecommunications service provider by an interexchange carrier is $0.0262 per minute. The average number of busy hour call attempts (BHCA) across the 3,000 toll free numbers is 2,500 BHCA, which, over the course of a year, costs in the millions of dollars paid to the interexchange carrier by the telecommunications service provider.